Thursday, April 25, 2013

Kat Fisher submits Keliy Anderson-Staley

Bianca

Keliy Anderson-Staley works with wet plate collodion tintypes.
Her project [Hyphen] Americans deals
with hyphenated American identities (Irish-American, African-American, etc.),
but really emphasizes a shared identity. With her work Anderson-Staley hopes to
“capture
a powerful likeness, which I then title only with a first name. Each portrait
is revealing but anonymous. Each is also uniquely representative of an
individual but not of a particular group. Therefore, although the heritage
of each individual might be inferred from assumptions we make about features
and costumes, the viewer is encouraged to suspend the kind of thinking that
would traditionally assist in decoding these images in the context of American
identity politics."

Kafi

Hackman

Estephanie

I was really drawn to these images because of the powerful
identity that each individual asserts. It is really interesting to see
contemporary portraiture work being done in tintype. Although she is not the
only artist currently doing this, Anderson-Staley adds to the conversation by
talking about construction of identity. By identifying these only by their first names, we only have our own assumptions about what "hyphen" American they are. Because of this we are made to realize that it doesn't really matter. There is one shared identity that is being shared by all of these individuals, and by us as well.